By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
Using sound and vibration stimulation, Dutch researchers were able to determine that unborn babies have short-term memory from at least 30 weeks gestation – or about two months before they are born.
The study, published in the current issue of the journal Child Development, was conducted by researchers at Maastricht University Medical Centre and the University Medical Centre St. Radboud and involved 100 pregnant women.
Five tests were conducted on the women in the last eight weeks of their pregnancies. The tests involved a series of one-second buzzes on their stomachs with a “fetal vibroacoustic stimulator.” The babies’ reponses, such as eye, mouth and body movements, were carefully tracked over the weeks with ultrasound imaging which revealed that they eventually “learned” or became “habituated” to the noises and stopped responding to them.
The study found that by 30 weeks of age, a baby could “remember” a sound for 10 minutes. However, the babies were tested repeatedly at 30, 32, 34, and 36 weeks. The 34- and 36-week-old babies habituated much faster than a 38-week-old baby that had not been tested before, which implies that these babies have a memory of at least 4 weeks—the interval between the test at 34 weeks and that at 38 weeks.
“A better understanding of the normal development of the fetal central nervous system will lead to more insight into abnormalities, allowing prevention or extra care in the first years of life and, as a consequence, fewer problems in later life,” the study’s authors said.
This is not the first time researchers have found evidence that the unborn have memories. In 1925, researchers discovered that unborn babies move less when exposed to a beeping car horn, door buzzers and even an electric toothbrush.
In 2003, researchers at Queen’s University in Canada studied 60 pregnant women and found that the heart rates of unborn babies sped up with they heard their mother’s voice but slowed down when a stranger spoke – a reaction that revealed sustained attention, memory and learning by the baby, researchers said.
The same group also researched the response of an unborn child to the father’s voice and concluded that if men speak to their babies in utero, the newborn will later remember his voice.
“It seems like every day we find out marvelous new things about the development of unborn children, said Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education and research for the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund, to the Washington Times.
“We hope that this latest information helps people realize more clearly that the unborn are members of the human family with amazing capabilities and capacities like these built in from the moment of conception.”
The Times reports that a NARAL Pro-Choice America for comment on the implications of the research was not returned.
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